Beneath Hill 60

by Will Davies

  Another device was the seismomicrophone, basically an electrical sound detector that could be placed at the end of a tunnel and connected by wire to a switchboard. A number of these could be connected to cover a whole section of the line, saving manpower and the exposure of listeners to the risk of countermining. However, they were nowhere near as effective as the geophone, and in some instances hardly better than an ear pressed up to the face.

  The accuracy of geophone readings depended upon the listener’s skill and experience. To be a listener it also took a special kind of person who could sit cramped at the end of a long, lonely tunnel for hours – a tiny candle the only source of light – with the ever-present fear that the Germans would explode a mine. All the while the listener had to keep a cool and focused state of mind. He needed good leadership, decent periods of rest out of the line and vast quantities of rum.

  The listener’s procedure was well rehearsed and efficient. On hearing what he perceived as German underground work, he immediately reported it to his duty officer, known as the trench officer or simply the ‘trench’. The officer would return underground with the listener and crawl into the tunnellers’ listening post and take up the geophones. If he confirmed the sound, other listening posts would be informed and they too would listen for the same sound. Bearings would be taken and plotted on the mine map, and this would continue over the next few days or weeks, to determine the progress of the enemy tunnel. They could then calculate accurately when the Germans would be closest to their own tunnel without breaking through, and when and where it was best to explode a camouflet.

  To give the listeners every chance of detecting the Germans, it was standard practice to cease tunnelling work at regular periods to give the listeners a period of silence. They also ceased work, except in one section, to check the volume of their own tunnelling, so that the listeners could establish if they – and the Germans – could detect any noise.

  The infantry manning the frontline trenches were reassured to know that up-to-date listening equipment was being used below them. They were quick to call in the tunnellers if they had the slightest suspicion that German mining work was going on below them, so tunnelling officers were continually being called out to investigate noise. Sometimes these were false alarms that took mining officers away from their real job. Baby mice squeaking, rats scurrying, water dripping, men hammering, splitting kindling or digging extensions to funk holes, and even the croaking of a frog had at various times been mistaken for German mining activity.

  Lieutenant Cassels, who had come to prominence with the Hooge ammonal firing, found himself continually annoyed and distracted by the need to investigate reported noises. When he was certain that it was a case of jitters and imagination, not German mining, he would turn up with an impressive ‘listening device’ he had knocked up himself, a box bristling with wires and connected to a stethoscope, which he proceeded to move around with a certain level of dramatic effect. This and a reassuring chat were usually enough to comfort the men and soothe their nerves.

  Another British tunnelling company, when called upon to investigate what was reported as German tunnelling, designated two ageing, near-deaf, ex-coalminers to check. They would turn up, much to the relief of the frontline troops, and solemnly go about their task. After listening and going through some well-rehearsed theatrics, they would say, ‘Yes, we can hear them, all right. They’re there. It sounds like they’re f***ing.’

  Astounded, someone would usually ask, ‘What, do you mean the Germans?’

  To which they would wryly say, ‘No, the rats.’

  This became a well-known joke all along the front and even the Germans were said to have heard the story.

  As a result of Griffiths’ work and his recruitment office in London, there were now 20 tunnelling companies in the field, made up not only of specialist miners but also engineers, mine managers and even doctors from the mining districts of Great Britain who were familiar with miners’ diseases and rescue work.

  The miners may have been experienced and enthusiastic, but they were never your typical, smartly dressed, British parade-ground soldiers. The tunnelling companies were taking on their own persona and their own independent spirit. Many of the men had spent a year at the front and as their work was very different and their skills unique, they had evolved from being Royal Engineers to virtually a private army engaged in a different war in a very different space to the men above ground.

  Tunnellers were on occasion hated and their presence shunned. When a mining company turned up and started work, the troops nearby often became edgy and nervous, fearful of drawing German tunnellers to their quiet patch of the front. But when the enemy could be heard below the frontline, the soldiers had a new sense of respect for the tunnellers. They were made very welcome then, and the troops were quick to offer their moral support, their muscle and their protection. General Harvey stated: ‘The men would not stay above unless the miners were beneath. That is a fact.’4

  The first honours for effective destructive tunnelling in 1916 went to the Germans with the ignition of the New Year’s Day mines south of the La Bassée Canal, to the east of Béthune. The British retaliated on 2 March with the exploding of three mines under the German frontline at the Chord, near the Hohenzollern Redoubt north of Loos, an area of incessant and bitter fighting.

  But it was still the high points along the line near Messines – St Eloi, the Mound, the Bluff, the Caterpillar and Hill 60 – that drew the attention of the planners. Now the British tunnellers began doing something very tricky: they continued digging tunnels at the same level as the Germans but secretly also put down shafts to a depth of more than 30 metres. This took them well below the German workings and the layers of watery, sandy, rocky earth, into the clay, which was much easier to tunnel through.

  The Germans found themselves at a disadvantage when it came to mine warfare here because ironically, in holding the high ground, they were forced to dig a lot deeper to get to the relatively stable blue-clay layer. Higher up, even along the Wytschaete to Messines Ridge, the water table was close to the surface, and digging through the waterlogged liquid sand layer was almost impossible. Lower down the hill, the British shafts – especially with the use of metal shafts – could quickly penetrate the thinner and, in places, non-existent sand and the water table, and then hit the impervious blue-clay layer where real tunnelling could start.

  The Germans sank concrete shafts using a circular steel ‘shoe’ with a cutting edge and, as it submerged under its own weight, they removed the earth from inside the shaft. Though clever, this was a process that needed a lot of heavy components: iron rings, sand, cement, metal rods, pumps, generators and a whole range of tools. Getting these to the front and set up would have been an extremely difficult process in peacetime, but in the mud and rain, across cratered trenches and churned-up earth, along narrow gauge railways and under fire, this was an amazing achievement.

  The Germans expected the British to be facing similar problems, which lulled them into a false sense of security for a while. But when they picked up an insecure telephone conversation that alerted them to the presence of a big British mining operation at St Eloi, they called in their expert tunnellers and made aerial searches looking for the spoil dumps. These the British had been careful to camouflage, and the German experts reported that there was ‘no immediate danger’. How wrong they were.5 On 27 March at 4.15 am, the British blew six enormous mines, killing an estimated 300 Germans and destroying a large section of their frontline and support trenches. The centuries-old Mound was unrecognisable.

  Even this turned out to be a wasted effort, though. The British infantry attacked only to be driven back, and the Germans now held high ground along the crater edge, a more defendable position that allowed them to observe the British lines.

  Two important things came from the St Eloi attack. First, the British 172nd Tunnelling Company had for the first time successfully used a timber shaft to contain the layer of running sand,
enabling them to reach dry clay at a depth of 12 metres. From there they began their sloping tunnel towards the German lines. This technique was to signal the beginning of the Allied dominance in the fighting underground on the Ypres salient.

  Second, it had a destabilising effect on the Germans. They had always held the initiative underground and felt confident and dominant. Suddenly they realised that, unbeknown to them, the Allies had developed deep mining skills that would be difficult to counter. Fear and dread spread among the German engineers and tunnellers as they grasped that the initiative had shifted from them and they had been outfought and out-thought. In fact, after St Eloi the Germans would make every effort to countermine, but they would locate and destroy only one of the Allies’ deep galleries (at Petite Douve in August 1916).

  Even though mining operations and tunnelling were not proving effective and the casualties among the tunnelling companies were hitting 1000 per month, after St Eloi there was growing support within the High Command. The success of deep mining and the fact that for the first time it was the Germans who had seemed confused and beaten had given them new hope.

  Like Griffiths before him, General Sir Herbert Plumer, soon to be given the overall command of the Messines attack, now saw value in offensive tunnelling and pushed GHQ to support it. But most importantly, the commander-in-chief, General Haig, was impressed, and so on 10 April 1916, he ordered that planning begin for the attack on the Messines Ridge. It was to begin, as Griffiths had suggested, with the firing of 20 massive mines. The countdown had started.

  Haig believed the Allies should try to break through on the Ypres salient, iron out the bulging line along the Messines Ridge and push through to the coast. The French, under General Joffre, agreed that a massive push was needed to break through and end the war, but he had a different idea about where the push should be made. He wanted the attack to be nearly 100 kilometres to the south, along the River Somme, where pressure was mounting against the French. And so it was agreed that the Allied offensive on the Somme would start in July, in high summer, when clear skies and warm temperatures would make the attack less problematic.

  Then came the news of the German assault on Verdun on 21 February 1916. A massive fortified salient that had epitomised French-frontier defence since Attila the Hun in the fifth century, it was the strategic gateway to the plains of Champagne and, beyond that, the city of Paris. While the British and French were sticking to the ‘breakthrough’ theory, the Germans had realised the futility of such an attempt. It had failed for them at Ypres, and they had watched as it failed for the British at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915 and for the French at the Battle of Artois in May 1915. Instead, they planned to draw the French armies into the narrow salient at Verdun, attack on three sides and bleed them dry.

  As the Germans poured more than two million shells and sent 250,000 men against the French garrison, and as the French rushed men to Verdun, the British were asked to quickly shift men south from the Ypres area to restore the frontline along the Somme. The Australian forces, training and reorganising in Egypt after the evacuation of Gallipoli, were dispatched west across the Mediterranean to what would become the meat grinder.

  A new phase in the Great War had begun.

  Oliver Woodward had little patience for parade-ground marching, yet there was one important drill that needed sorting the day before the embarkation parade. The officers had been issued with swords so that they could look the part of young and gallant warriors. They received only a few hours’ practice in sword drill and saluting, certainly not enough to prepare themselves for this important parade. They had what Woodward called ‘a very hazy idea as to what to do with our swords’. He cheekily added, ‘[This] was quite in keeping with our early education in matters military.’1

  February in Sydney had been hot, and the late-afternoon southerlies that cooled the coastal suburbs had rarely made it out west to Casula, where dusty lines of tents seemed to stretch to infinity. Even the beer seemed warm, but the pub did a roaring trade as men made the most of their last local leave. The trudge back to camp from the pubs in Liverpool did little to dull a restless night on their thin straw palliasses, their minds on the big adventure that would sweep them from this comfort in the early dawn.

  At 5 am, as the chorusing of kookaburras welcomed the new day, the damnable blast of reveille shook the camp. It was 19 February 1916. Men tumbled from their tents, tired and hung-over but excited and apprehensive about the day before them. There was much to do: pack their kitbags, clean their rifles, polish brass and prepare themselves for the final inspection. At noon the men paraded, were inspected by their commanding officer and moved in columns of three towards Liverpool Station. Cheered on by the crowd, their feet felt light as they stepped out, ‘Hef-rite-hef-rite-hef-rite,’ to the thump of the bass drum of their unit band.

  At 3 pm they boarded their steam train for the short journey to Sydney’s Central Station. Forming up in Eddy Avenue, the men proudly kept in step as they marched up Wentworth Avenue, along College Street and to the gates of the Domain, where before a large crowd they were reviewed by the state commandant.

  There, ramrod straight, their uniforms neat and their brass gleaming, was a company of the Shropshire Light Infantry. These British regulars could show the sloppy colonials a thing or two about drill. And how they did. In one swift movement, their salute with swords was conducted with a precision that took the mining boys’ breath away, particularly after the pathetic sword salute by Woodward’s mob, which he dubbed ‘just an embarrassing mess … a sight to behold’.2

  At 5.30 pm, the parade and farewell over, the men moved off to the Royal Agricultural Show Grounds where they were to bivouac for the night. This time, the cool zephyrs from Bondi made a difference, even keeping the mosquitos from Centennial Park at bay. But it was for most a restless night. Reveille was blown at 3 am, just as many finally began to sleep. In the breaking dawn they ate a light breakfast before parading for the final roll call. As each man’s name was called, and after answering ‘Sir’, he stepped out to join a new line of men, those now checked off and going away. ‘This last roll call was impressive; it seemed to mark the stage between playing at soldiers and being soldiers,’ Woodward reflected.3

  The sun was just breaking the eastern sky as the men moved off for the short march to Woolloomooloo Bay and the waiting troopship HMAT Ulysses, designated during the war as the A38. There were crowds in the streets, many bidding their last farewells. Some joined their loved ones in the ranks, swinging along in step. It was a sad sight. Oliver Woodward was thankful there were no relatives seeing him off, for he found it heartbreaking to witness those last painful moments between mothers and sons. ‘I confess that had my own mother been present I would have broken down,’ he wrote.4

  At 8.30 am the ropes fell away and the last of the coloured streamers broke and settled in the murky harbour water. Slowly the water churned, and the A38 moved out into the harbour, passing a number of launches bearing crowds of waving Sydneysiders. An hour later the Ulysses had cleared the Heads and left the last of the launches bobbing in its wake. Then the sandstone cliffs and eucalypt horizon slowly faded from view.

  On all departing troopships this moment was difficult for every man. The deep longing to be back with kith and kin, and the fear of what lay ahead, was everywhere evident on the ship. Woodward cast his eye about the faces lining the rail, outwardly proud and enjoying the great adventure, but inwardly sullen and apprehensive. Years later when he looked back on his war experiences he would note: ‘One passed through many dark days at the Front, but their one was buoyed up with the thrill of battle and nothing seemed quite so bad as the day when steaming down the coast of New South Wales, one had to battle with the fear of the unknown without being keyed up as in War.’5

  For many men, this was their first time at sea, and seasickness turned many into ‘a sorry spectacle’, irrespective of rank. For two days the Ulysses journeyed south, arriving in Port Melbourne, where the men were dis
embarked and taken to Broadmeadows Camp. After a week of parades, march-pasts and presentations, they again boarded their troopship and headed west across the Bight to Fremantle. They enjoyed two days’ leave in Perth, having a dip in the surf and a lunch prepared by the women of Fremantle, then boarded their ship, along with 800 reinforcements. The ship departed for their anchorage in the Gage Roads, in Fremantle Harbour, but struck an uncharted rock and started to take water, so the troops were quickly offloaded and marched to Blackboy Camp, about 20 kilometres northeast of the city of Perth. It was three weeks before the ship was repaired and they were able to sail to war.

  On 1 April 1916, transport A38 moved out from Fremantle Pier to the blessing of the Anglican Bishop of Perth and the cheers of the throng of people perched on every available vantage point. Slowly the ship headed into the setting sun and safely anchored in the Gage Roads. At six o’clock the following morning, they set sail westward, the men lining the rails for their last glimpse of Australia: the small, sandy dollop that was Rottnest Island.

  Aboard the Ulysses there was an added level of anxiety and tension, because on 1 March the Germans had announced that they were extending their submarine campaign. Australia was far from the U-boat ports of northern Europe, but the operational capability of these submarines was not known, and their success had put the fear of a watery grave into many travelling at sea for the first time. There was also the potential for German surface raiders to appear such as the Emden, which was sunk in November 1914 on this same convoy route.